


Cherry Jam

by StealthKaiju



Series: Captain's Songbook [2]
Category: Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: Character Naval Gazing, Cherry-picked Research, Fluff, M/M, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-02
Updated: 2018-09-02
Packaged: 2019-07-06 00:01:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,251
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15874410
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StealthKaiju/pseuds/StealthKaiju
Summary: On a quiet peaceful mission Spock and Jim have a discussion about numerous things. A lot of it is about cherries.Inspired by Cherry Bomb by The Runaways.





	Cherry Jam

_I’m the fox you’ve been waiting for_

Anxiety may be anathema to a Vulcan disposition, yet Spock thought it prudent to feel some trepidation towards visiting an off-world Terran colony. The visit to Omicron Ceti III, though almost a year ago now, still caused traumatic distress when he thought of it. His behaviour had been far from exemplary. He had indulged in wanton sexual behaviour. He had acted insubordinately to a superior. He had been physically violent towards his captain…towards his friend.

 

At one point (Surak forgive) he had been climbing a tree!

 

A shudder of revulsion threatened to overwhelm him, but he suppressed it, eyes closing briefly. Controls back in place, he resumed reading the reports on Ostara VII.

 

The colony had first landed five years prior on the M-class planet (atmosphere 78% oxygen, nitrogen 21%, gravity levels similar to Terra), and Doctor Gaia Lepus kept meticulous reports on climate, crop rotation and yield. She had collated and indexed various reports from her colleagues detailing the health and psychological well-being of the two thousand colonists.

 

Reading her concise yet informative work, Spock could not help be impressed by such an analytical and ordered intelligence. Idle curiosity had always been considered a superfluous and illogical trait by his adolescent peers, but Spock was intrigued and wanted to meet her.

 

Especially since the captain… Jim…had admitted he had known her as well, almost twenty years before.

 

*

 

Spock had expected the doctor to be a glamorous petite beauty, like every other female acquaintance of Jim’s. However, Lepus was broad-shouldered and tall, with long limbs that rippled with muscle. She was also older than Jim by approximately six or seven years, if the grey streaks in her short hair and tight lines around her eyes were any indication.

 

‘Hell, she could tear us in half!’ McCoy had muttered when they had first beamed down, pitched low so only Spock could hear him. While Spock doubted the veracity of the statement, he could appreciate the sentiment.

 

‘Gaia!’ Jim exclaimed, his voice genuinely jubilant, none of the slight purr he had to his words when he had met with female friends in the past. ‘It’s lovely to see you.’

 

Doctor Lepus smiled and hugged Jim tightly, tall enough to rest her chin on the top of his head. For a minute they embraced, as both seemed to forget the presence of the others.

 

‘Well, as the captain seems to have forgotten his manners, please allow me to introduce myself,’ drawled McCoy. ‘Leonard, as we seem to be using first names.’

 

Jim walked back over, looking slightly sheepish. ‘My apologies. This is Doctor Leonard McCoy, my chief medical officer, and this is Mr Spock, my first officer.’

 

Doctor Lepus shook hands with McCoy and offered the ta’al to Spock. ‘A pleasure gentlemen,’ her voice soft and high, sounding like a much younger woman. She smiled at them. It was (if Spock was inclined to be sentimental) a pretty, sweet smile. ‘If you would follow me, we will start the tour, and you can get any information required by Starfleet.’

 

*

 

The visit to the schoolroom was, for want of a better word, eventful. Even discounting superior Vulcan hearing, a class of thirty four-year-olds was exceptionally loud and chaotic. The energy they must expel in running around, climbing, jumping, shouting, caterwauling… highly illogical.

 

The teacher, a portly man in his forties, had got them quiet and sitting still long enough to ask if they had any questions for the Starfleet officers. All hands had gone up. The teacher sighed and, with an embarrassed smile in Spock’s direction, clarified ‘Who has a question that is not about Mister Spock’s ears?’

 

All hands went down. McCoy doubled over laughing, and even Jim was smirking. Spock took it with his usual stoic grace. After all, no malice had been intended.

 

‘Was it intended for there to be children as early on in the settling of the colony?’ Spock asked.

 

The teacher had laughed, then bit his lip to maintain his professionalism. ‘No, there was not.’

 

Spock raised an eyebrow.

 

Doctor Lepus smiled. ‘It was initially very cold. And people got bored very quickly.’

 

*

 

It was several hours later, when more ensigns had beamed down to help with administrative duties and Spock and Jim were no longer ‘on the clock’ as McCoy phrased it, that Spock and Jim were sitting in the garden belonging to Doctor Lepus. There were no chairs but she had lent them an old patchwork blanket, and Spock sat neatly cross-legged while Kirk lay sprawled like a lazing cat in the sunshine.

 

 They were joined by a calico cat, much to Spock’s surprise. It was of course not native to the planet (it had been selected because of its lack of discernible fauna). The feline was fairly advanced in years, a slight arthritic cramp to its movements. Apparently it had been a stowaway on one of the original ships, living off replicated food until they had began breeding chickens from cloned embryos. She was a lazy, friendly girl called ‘Miss Havisham’, and was quite content to let Jim rub her belly for minutes at a time.

 

Jim was eating cherries, naturally grown cherries, taking the opportunity to indulge while McCoy was not around. His lips pursed as he chewed the fleshy drupes, a slight moue as he tried to spit out the stones as politely as possible, his mouth and fingertips stained purple.

 

Spock should have found it disgusting, this eating with the hands, the slight clicking sound of Jim’s jaws moving behind closed lips, the little ‘hhm’ of appreciation he was not aware he made. Yet, Spock did not find it disgusting. Quite the opposite.

 

He cleared his throat, searching his brain for a distraction. ‘This must be their first season, it takes at least three years for cherry trees to produce their first crop,’ he stated.

 

Jim looked up in surprise. ‘Yes, Gaia was telling me earlier. She’s been kind enough to give me some of the jam made from them, said there was a jar for you as well.’ A slight frown creased his eyebrows. ‘Just don’t tell Bones, he’d only nag at me about the sugar in it.’

 

‘I have never had cherry jam before. It is a thoughtful gift.’

 

‘You’ve never had cherry jam, yet you know how long it takes for a cherry tree to produce fruit?’

 

Spock raised an eyebrow, looked into his friend’s mirth-lit eyes. ‘I am also aware of the fact that cherries need a temperate climate and a well-drained soil of 6 to 6 point eight pH, a nitrogen fertiliser and a minimum of six hours sun per day.’

 

Jim sat up straighter, a half-smile. ‘I do so enjoy our conversations Spock. I always learn something new.’

 

In the past Spock had been treated with bemusement or outright disdain by his human colleagues over his capacity to absorb information. He never found that with Jim. He always accepted his overflow of information, sometimes with a teasing lilt, but never with a lack of interest.

 

‘I can’t compete with your scientific acumen, but I have a cherry fact,’ Jim said brightly. ‘Did you know that cherries were first introduced in England by order of Henry VIII?’

 

Spock kept his face neutral while his brain floundered. ‘The sixteenth century monarch, the one who ended years of war?’

 

‘No,’ said Jim, smiling. ‘His son, the gouty, fat syphilitic one, who killed two of his six wives.’

 

‘That was allowed?!’

 

‘Oh, you could do a lot if you were king.’ Jim cleared his throat, his voice soft, a darkness over his face. ‘Human history is full of people getting away with doing awful things just because they were in power.’

 

Spock was a patient man. He knew his friend well enough to tell, by the slight fidgeting of his hands and the catching of his breath, that he wanted to say something, just that he was not sure how.

 

‘You know, I haven’t had non-replicated Earth fruit since Tarsus.’ Jim whispered. His eyes looked down where he was still stroking Miss Havisham, a slight tremble in his fingers. ‘Night before… the night before it went to hell.’

 

Spock was hit by a wave of revulsion. Every member of Starfleet had studied the Tarsus IV massacre, but his friend had lived it.

 

He longed to comfort his friend, to wrap his arms around him. He felt inadequate. McCoy, for all his bluster and griping, would be far better in this situation, would know how to offer comfort.

 

Jim went on, eyes still not meeting Spock’s. ‘Peaches and cream. Even now, just the thought of eating it… makes me feel sick.’ He lifted his eyes to meet Spock’s gaze. ‘That must be highly illogical to a Vulcan sensibility.’

 

Spock shook his head. ‘Many studies have suggested a functional link between the area of the brain responsible for taste memory and the area responsible for encoding circumstances around that experience. Humans can learn to associate tastes with negative psychological states, and can unlearn them by experiencing the same tastes in different circumstances.’ He tilted his head in contemplation. ‘I suspect that Doctor McCoy would not be in agreement with such an experiment.’

 

Jim smiled, a brittle smile but genuine. ‘He certainly wouldn’t agree with the cream part.’ He looked shifty. ‘Don’t tell him about the jam.’

 

Spock nodded solemnly, and Jim’s smile grew wider.

 

‘How do you know Doctor Lepus?’ Spock asked, in an attempt to change the subject, to move the conversation towards happier things.

 

‘From Tarsus.’

 

Oh. That attempt had failed.

 

‘Yes she… Ouch!, you little madam!’ Jim spat, as Miss Havisham (whom Jim had neglected for all of thirty seconds) had dug her claws into the meat of his thigh. She merely meowed at his admonishment, and he straightened out his legs so she could jump on his lap. He petted her with his clean hand. ‘I met Gaia on Tarsus. She was the one who introduced me to Dickens.’

 

‘Another friend?’

 

‘No,’ Jim laughed, a beautiful sound. ‘No, he’s an author. A very old one.’ He smiled, a slight blush on his cheeks. ‘I used to have such a crush on her.’

 

‘She does not seem your type.’ Spock nearly bit his tongue at his rudeness.

 

Jim’s tongue licked his lower lips, and he looked slyly at Spock from under his eyelashes. ‘I have always been attracted to people smarter than me.’

 

Spock felt his cheeks and the tips of his ears heat. The sultriness of Jim’s voice… no, he must have imagined it.

 

He looked at Jim’s cherry-stained fingertips, nails red-rimmed. Jim’s nails had always fascinated him. They were usually short and clean, nail plate a sunset pink as opposed to Spock’s own slight green hue.

 

Nails, or unguis, were fascinating in themselves. Made of the protein alpha-keratin, they had no feeling themselves, but protected and increased the sensitivity of the fingertip by counter pressure. They provided extended precision grip, and cutting and scraping capability. A remnant of a more feral ancestor of man, who fought tooth and claw…

 

Spock was internally pontificating, allowing his thoughts to become tangential. Spending time with the captain, especially in recreation, always seemed to involve him philosophising, and that was starting to unsettle him more than hostile natives or power-mad beings they invariably encountered on missions.

 

Spock snuck a look at his captain, whose liquid-gold eyes were looking at the sky, peaceful and contented. So beautiful.

 

‘Do you think Starfleet regulations would let us have a cat?’ Jim asked.

 

‘Regulation two-six-five paragraph c states that –‘

 

‘It was a rhetorical question Spock.’

 

‘And what point did it make? It obviously was not intended to start a discussion as you interrupted my answer.’

 

Jim sighed theatrically. ‘Before we get into a long debate in semantics, the inevitable result being conclusive proof that you know more of the rules of standard than I ever will, is there any way we could get a pet on the Enterprise?’

 

Spock pursed his lips to stop them from quirking into a smile. ‘No.’

 

There was a flash of purple as Jim stuck the tip of his tongue out at Spock in a gesture of petulance. ‘Spoilsport.’

 

*

 

A few days later, back on the ship and in the privacy of his quarters, Spock opened the jar of cherry jam. Hit by a wave of sweetness, he breathed it in.

 

Spock did not have an eidetic memory in the usual sense – he did not see memories as photographs, but as a map of impressions, encompassing sight, touch, smell and taste. Just by that smell of the cherries, he had perfect recall of the feel of the sun on his face, the sound of the breeze through the grass, the feel of the blanket underneath his hands.

 

And the longing for Jim. The desire to caress his stained fingers. To taste the sweetness of the cherries on his lips…

 

Spock quickly put the lid back onto the jar, the metallic clink loud and jarring in the quiet of his quarters. His hands shook as he put it back into his refrigeration unit. He scolded himself, meditated and refused to think of such things.

 

Spock was dutiful and controlled. Yet, with all the will in the world, he could not control his dreams as he slept. For his friendship with Jim – his _attraction_ to him – had caused something to take root inside of him.

 

And it was starting to bear rich, dangerous fruit.


End file.
